ABSTRACTS - The American School of Classical Studies at Athens

Chris Hayward, School of Geosciences, Grant Institute of Earth Science, University of Edinburgh, UK
Stone Exploitation and Landscape Alteration in Corinthia and Sikyonia
The Corinthia has an important place in the study of stone exploitation during antiquity. The region has
significant, widely distributed resources of high quality stone, and, unusually in Greece, an almost
unbroken history of extraction of monumental-sized stone blocks spanning the 8 th century BC until late
Roman times. Significant evidence of stone exploitation in the form of quarries, possibly related road
networks, and the finished monuments is preserved within the region, and at Delphi and Epidauros, to
which large quantities of Corinthian stone are known from epigraphic evidence to have been exported.
The properties of the stone itself provide data that can enable detailed reconstructions of the operation of
the stone exploitation industry and related activities during different periods. Significant topographic
alteration has accompanied the quarrying of stone, of which millions of cubic metres was removed during
antiquity, and some spectacular quarries are preserved. Quarrying within urban centres caused significant
landscape alteration. Palaeotopographic reconstruction of pre-extraction and later contours assists in
understanding urban development at Corinth, Isthmia, Sikyon and at other locations.
Rune Frederiksen, Danish Archaeological Institute
Topographical Implications of the 7th century BC city wall of Corinth
This paper focuses on 7th century Corinth, in particular on the wall excavated west of the Potters' Quarter
by A. Stillwell. The wall was interpreted as a fortification wall, and the documentation for this identification
is re-examined and the topographical implications will be discussed. If correctly identified and correctly
dated, this wall raises important basic questions about the urban centre of the early Polis of Corinth of the
7th century. For instance, how was the course of the rest of the wall? How was the area within the wall
built? In the 8th century Corinth seems to have had a dispersed settlement structure, and change of that
picture is identified with the establishment of cemeteries outside the (later) perimeter starting already in
the late 8th century. The study of the fortification wall, largely neglected by scholars writing on Corinth in
the last two decades, aims at discussing and defining the most likely type of settlement structure at
Corinth in the 7th century, taking into consideration evidence from other contemporary urban centres in
the Greek World.